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Friday, October 24, 2014

In 2009, a spirited woman named Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva started
the annual BN Poetry Awards, to stir Ugandan women poets to write more
and better. In just five years, the yields have got the whole continent
feasting. A Thousand Voices Rising –an anthology of contemporary
African poetry, compiled and edited by Nambozo herself, is the latest of
the yields.

Never before has a poetry collection brought the mighty
and the budding, the old and the young, male and female, the bold and
the subtle poets of the continent together, as this anthology does. Poets
from Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Rwanda,
Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Tanzania, Liberia, Algeria and DRC, tackle all
the imaginable and tangible subjects under the sun, with such power as
art for social change, in varied styles as will meet the varied needs of
the varied readers that will buy the book.

The 122 poems are divided in eight parts comprising poems of related themes. The varied subjects are of course inevitably linked with the temperaments and experiences of their individual authors. For
example Beatrice Lamwaka’s “Acoli Dirges” is a barb aimed at the modern
generation of Ugandans who have been so influenced by western education
that they speak English with a twang in imitation of their British or
American counterparts. The poet observes that our mother tongues
have become too ‘difficult’ that we now “speak Acoli with a twang like
we are speaking English…/We speak English like we are eating sweet
potatoes/ No one can defeat us/ We defeat the English in their mother
tongue!” The poem basically laments the breakdown of our cultural authenticity.

Another
poem that depicts the poet as a keen observer of modern society is John
Kariuki’s “Silenced Forever” about outspoken analysts and critics;
often the voices of the voiceless who go silent as the graves as soon as
they get jobs from the government or other establishments they had
previously severely criticised or spoken up against.

Some poems
are about the ugly past or things we would rather forget such as Susan
Kiguli’s “I laugh at Amin” or Ivan Okuda’s “Kyadondo, July 2010” which
recalls the black day terrorists bombed soccer lovers in Uganda in 2010,
while some, such as Eugene Mbugua’s “My Village Crush” brings back
memories in some of us who went to village schools. It’s about the
poet’s childhood sweetheart whom he meets many years later when she’s
married with several children and is shocked at how changed and altered
she is from the village beautiful sweetheart she was back then.

The
anthology also contains all the winning poems from the BN Poetry Awards,
starting with Lillian Aujo’s inaugural winner, “Soft Tonight” (2009),
with imagery in all its sensuality. But its erotic nature pales
compared to Beverley Nambozo’s highly rhythmic “Sseebo gwe Wange” with
its colourful and picturesque lines like “…you pound me like the
engalabi/ I slap the wall to your rhythm…I moan like thunder…”

Poetry
enthusiasts whose love for the genre was particularly evoked by the
classic anthology, Poems from East Africa (1996) will especially love A
Thousand Voices Rising, for its significance and relevance. It’s an
anthology that is as provocative as is evocative; simple yet complex,
plus you will be impressed by the sheer potential of the up-and-coming
poets whose works give it its uniqueness. As award-winning Malawian
poet, Prof Jack Mapanje lauds the anthology, its “original, fresh and
represents some of the best African minds.”